I’m designing my new shop for when we move to town after the farm is sold.Pretty much settled on a 23 ft x 23 ft square with one 7’ x 9’ garage door and a standard 3 ft personnel door.I will have just over 9’ high ceiling in this space.

The problem is I don’t want the garage door, when it’s open, covering up the lights in the ceiling, and I don’t want tracks up there either. I could use a roll up type door but they are ugly and noisy and can’t be insulated and have no windows.

The only thing I have come up with is a pair of “carriage house” type doors that swing open to the outside. Thought I would see if any other LJs out there have other suggestions.

Thanks

-- Michael: Hillary has a long list of accomplishments, though most DAs would refer to them as felonies.

14 replies so far

How big of things are you expecting to move in or out of there. I would think double 36” doors would be plenty big. Most of the time you can just use the one door. When you have something big open both. My shop has only one door and I built it myself. It is 4’ wide and 80” tall. You could also order taller doors for a little extra height.

-- Bill M. I love my job as a firefighter, but nothing gives me the satisfaction of running my hand over a project that I have built and just finished sanding.

I just looked at where you live and my first thought is SNOW, ICE. You can get insulated roll up doors but I agree on the tracks. You might look at outside sliding doors but SNOW AND ICE needs to be considered. You can gIet them with windows and insulated. Also look into floresant 0 degree lights. They worked great for me in my 30×30 shop in Missouri. If your in the country you might look into a small wood burning stove to burn up scraps, even if you have central heat.

Michael: I have a 10foot standard opening in my garage now workshop and it has a tilt-a-door (pain in the you know what).I have decided to make one large door 7 foot and one personal door 3 foot.The large one will swing from the left hand side and the 3 foot door will swing off the large door.Frame for both doors will be steel 1-1/4 square. The 7 foot door will probably be shut 90 percent of the time and will have a jockey wheel at about the 6-1/2 foot mark.The the old Tilt door will be used for the covering of the new doors.

Firefighter, I could possibly get by with a pair of 4 ft wide doors. The reason I want a wide opening is not to get things in or out of the shop; at least not the main reason. I want to be able to sell this as a garage or as a shop, if I ever need to sell this house. Some people would have no interest in a shop, but nearly everyone could use a garage.

Deputydawg, A small wood stove is a possibility, as much for the cozy factor as anything else. I have lived a half mile from my nearest neighbor in the middle of 40 acres of woods with a small creek running through my front yard for 35 years. But, I’m having to sell my little piece of paradise and move to town. There is no restriction on having a wood stove in town here, yet. I’m sure the socialists and progressives will fix that as soon as they get done destroying the rest of our country, but that’s a discussion for another time and place.

Merlin, I like the idea of a steel frame door. I could design that and weld it up right now. I have a welder and I work as an engineer for a steel fabricator/general contractor.

I had forgotten about those tip up type doors. My parents had those. It would avoid the track issue, but when in the raised position it would block the lights right over my workbench.

-- Michael: Hillary has a long list of accomplishments, though most DAs would refer to them as felonies.

+1 for firefighter. I have a 26×24 shop I built myself and it’s got a single 36” door on the one side and double 36 on another. Most of the time the double doors stay shut, or one of them is open. I only open both when I need to get something big in/out of the shop. EDIT: And if you want to resell it as a garage you can always order a roll-up rolladen style door:http://commercial.wayne-dalton.com/self-storage.asp?section=ds-200

not to be rude but I think you are overthinking it. If the door is up there will be daylight. If you go with a 9×7 with windows really how many lights would it block, maybe 1. Not to mention you could position the light to shine through the window when the door is up at night.

I been thinking some more about this, sorry Shawn, I’m going the wrong direction, but those tip up doors can be arranged so they form a partial canopy outside the garage and don’t swing in so far as to be an obstruction.Like this:

-- Michael: Hillary has a long list of accomplishments, though most DAs would refer to them as felonies.

I have a neighbor that has an airplane hanger on the end of his house. The wall lifts from the bottom toward the outdoors and hinges at the top. It takes 2- 6” x 6” posts for the hydraulics to attach to. He rolls a 182 Cessna through the space.

A novel concept… Go with the standard off-the-shelf roll-up door. The size of the doorway will limit the size of the goods coming in, so the tracks should not be an issue. Then either mount 1 florescent strip on either side of the tracks so that they will be beside the raised door, or get a door with windows and mount the light fixture so that it will shine through the windows, albeit with shadows and less intensity.